The Daily Blog Open Mic Tuesday 26th May 2015

1. As a Huff Post article about giving 16 and 17 year olds the vote points out, how can we justify allowing 16 and 17 years old to marry with parental consent, pay taxes, join the NZ Defence Force and then fail to give them the democratic right to vote and have their say in the way this country is governed. It’s exploitation.

2. A GREAT BIG OUCH, if this latest Roy Morgan poll is to be believed!

   http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/6248-roy-morgan-new-zealand-voting-intention-may-2015-201505250727

   • Not such a big ouch Mary_A, check the Roy Morgan’s at the same stage after the 2011 and 2008 elections and from off the top of my tiny little mind i think you will find that much the same thing occurred,

     Having said that, most of the Morgan poll would have been pre-budget,(an assumption so made which i may yet regret),so the next one from Roy will be read with interest,

     Should National’s polling, both the publicly published stuff and National’s own weekly polling show a significant boost in support after the budget had that Party try a little masquerade in the left of the political spectrum they might well be tempted to attempt to ‘own’ the space,(Labour having left it, except for rhetoric,caverniously empty),

     Should National make that attempt and further bolster the fortunes of the kids reliant upon low wages/benefits i for one will have no complaint…

3. Please stop navel gazing over the 2014 election result Green Party, far from exhibiting bouts of sadness over not increasing the vote % you all should be high fiving the fact that the Party ‘held the line’

   When looked at across the spectrum from Colon’s Conservatives to NZFirst, the electorate took quite a step to the right,

   To have held the previous % of the vote when the other parties of the left,(here i should really say Labour with a suitable number of ?????’s attached),took a hammering isn’t a bad result in any way,

   At some point the pendulum of voter sentiment will swing to the left again,(altho National are capable as the budget showed of being able to masquerade in that space), and, the Green share of the vote will rise,

   Myself i see too much focus on electoral percentages as likely to be to a certain extent a sea anchor for the Party,

   i do believe that at this stage of the election cycle the Green Party should be willing to show in policy where it differs from Labour, and, to do so loudly,

   While it is obvious that Labour will need the Green Party to form a coalition Government there is a point to ‘loudly’ proclaiming the differences in policy at this point of the election cycle,

   Take the current cunning ploy(tongue in cheek sarcasm),of Labour playing mental ping pong over superannuation, the Green Party should be prepared to ‘loudly’ wade into this ‘conversation’ and boldly state it’s position,

   Labour’s fixation with first raising the age of entitlement,(a grand 6 year experiment in how to LOSE votes), has now morphed into an attack on certain segments of those with the entitlement,

   More votes will be lost to Labour the longer Andrew Little commits seppuku via an overdose of verbiage, it is for this reason that the Green Party should be loudly putting it’s position on superannuation into the public arena,

   The longer Labour flog this particular piece of electoral suicide the more votes it will lose, the Green Party ‘must’ proclaim its policy here which shows a difference to Labour’s simply to attempt at stopping the slow bleed of the Labour vote across to the right of the spectrum….

   • +100…they should be concentrating on bigger issues like taxing the wealthy corporations, stopping the hemorraging flow of money out of the country eg banks and overseas corporates….making tertiary education free for New Zealanders…funding tertiary education properly so we dont have to depend on foreign students… who then use it as a loop-hole to gain residency and buy up NZ housing( which is a bargain compared with their own countries)….stopping property speculation by foreigners

     Lets face it the Labour Party is dumb and for dumbies

     ‘Labour for Dumbies’

4. Unbelievable!!!, they are at it again, Labour that is, Andrew Little was on my wireless,(RadioNZ National), again this morning beating the Superannuation drum,

   This time it’s ”millionaires are collecting the pension”,and ”old people are working while collecting the pension lets take it off them”

   Over at the ”we are not a Labour Party website”, the Standard, a post extolling Little’s position has been running hot complete with graphs showing how the number of those receiving superannuation will double in 30 years,(shock horror i agree the number will double),

   But,

   This data set, http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/research_and_publications/fact…/3072801.PDF and, this data set, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/economy_of_New_Zealand say that while it is true that the number of those receiving the pension will double in 30 years the GDP of the country will also double and thus the amount of money available to the Government will also double,

   Here’s the basic figures spread across the period from 1940 to 2014,

   GDP in billions 1940, $19 billion– 1973, $60 billion– 2004, $125 billion, 2014, $171 billion,

   i have a better data set showing GDP by year over the period by year which is buried in my notes and as my notes are a pile of epic proportions it will take a while to resurrect that particular data set,

   What the GDP figures say is that no matter what financial,oil, or any other depression, recession has befallen our little islands, and, no matter how many workers have created that GDP, Over Any 30 Year Period you care to look at,

   GDP Has Always Doubled, so, what Labour are doing is creating ‘a crisis’ over superannuation by concentrating on one side of the data on the cost side of the equation while deliberately ignoring the data on the income side of the equation,(speaking of Government expenditure/revenue),

   Why are Labour determined to die in the ditch over this, ugly f**king Neo-Liberalism is what drives Labour/Act and the NZ Treasury to continue feeding what is essentially a LIE to the electorate,

   ‘The Lie’ as i point out is by simply concentrating on the data on the cost side of superannuation while ignoring the projected future Government income contained in the GDP data sets Labour etc are creating a ‘crisis’ that does not and will not exist,

   Why???, ask yourself this, after the age of entitlement to superannuation was raised from 60 to 65 way back in the 90’s how many rounds of tax cutting by following Governments occurred, how much in dollar terms were these tax cuts,

   Culminating in the Clark Government’s working for families tax rebate scheme there were more rounds of tax cutting after the age of superannuation entitlement was raised from 60 to 65 than i can remember,

   All of them, the rounds of tax cutting and the working for families tax credits were funded off of GDP growth,

   Such ongoing rounds of tax cutting and working for families simply proves that superannuation was affordable at age 60, instead of the present 65, i rest, for now, my case….

   • +100…YUP …’Labour for Dummies’

     ….’Labour eats its own’

     ….’Little Labour Lost’

5. We need to pull our brave troops out of Iraq?….Where is the Labour Party on this?….There is no reason for our troops to be there training Iraq troops if Iraq troops don’t want to fight!!!!

   ‘‘No will’ to fight ISIS? US Defense Sec blasts Iraqi troops’

   http://rt.com/usa/261681-carter-iraq-fight-isis-ramadi/

   “US Defense Secretary Ash Carter has lashed out at the Iraqi army, which last week abandoned the major central city of Ramadi, as well as millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, to the Islamic State, despite reportedly outnumbering the jihadists 10-to-1.

   “What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight, they withdrew from the site,” Carter, who was appointed earlier this year, told CNN in scathing commentary.”

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